Questions state racial balance law

Published 6:52 pm, Monday, June 24, 2013

To the editor:

Did you notice that most parents support continuing the school district's efforts to achieve racial balance on a voluntary, versus compulsory, basis? Did you notice that opposition to the racial balancing mandate is confined primarily to compulsory redistricting by either the state or Greenwich school boards? When you wrote your editorial (Time June 23), were you aware that several `really, really' legitimate questions about the constitutionality of the statute, and the power of the state Board of Education to enforce it, exist?

As your editorial asserted that "segregated schools are bad for all students," wouldn't you agree that districts with virtually all-Caucasian student populations would logically fall into this category? Conversely, wouldn't districts with outsized minority student populations? Are you aware that neighboring school districts with nearly 100 percent Caucasian enrollments have not, in fact, been cited for racial imbalance by the state school board? Are you aware that the state statute at issue exempts schools with minority enrollment of 70 percent or higher from the racial balance requirement entirely? Do you find it at all strange that a district must in fact be racially diverse for it to trigger scrutiny from the state board under the racial balancing statute?

Are you aware the state school board employs only five broad-based racial classifications for Connecticut school children, including a separate one for children of Hispanic (Spanish) descent? Do you think the state board is aware that Spain is a country in Europe?

Did you notice that the racial balancing statute fails to account for the existence of bi-racial and multi-racial children altogether, and that the state boars only began to account for them in 2010? Were you aware the state board made a unilateral decision to classify these children as minority students, regardless of their actual racial make-up?

Did you know that this segment of the student population in Greenwich was at 4 percent in 2012, and the state school board projects it to grow significantly in the years to come? Did you know that your own paper has reported that 27 to 30 percent of Greenwich children (of all religious, racial and ethnic classifications) attend private schools? Does it occur to you that the automatic classification of Greenwich's multi-racial students as minority students, and the exclusion of one-third of its school-aged children of all races might impact the reliability of data used by the state board? Additionally, wouldn't a large minority population, and a rapidly growing multi-racial population, typically be considered hallmarks of integration and diversity by most standards?

Would you say that a racial balancing statute that relies on outdated assumptions about race and diversity adequately deals with the full ranges of both in 21st Century America, let alone in Greenwich? Can you say the statute in question is both adequately written and fairly applied, when only racially diverse districts are targeted by the state board, and racially homogenous ones go scot-free? Are you absolutely certain the statute meets all requirements necessary to pass Constitutional muster, or you just taking the State's word for it? Finally, as a journalist who owes their professional existence to the First Amendment, were you being serious when you said Greenwich parents should not `question' the state?

Sarah Cutting-Mills

Greenwich

Wasteful spending?

To the editor:

I mailed a check for $20 on June 10 to pay the alarm ordinance annual registration fee. Payment was due July 1. As of June 23, the check has not been cashed. Yet on June 22 I received a "second notice," mailed with 36 cents postage on June 21, demanding payment and threatening dire financial penalties if payment is not received by July 31.

This is, indeed, wasteful spending. Perhaps our selectmen could hire another in their legion of consultants to instruct the Alarm Ordinance Administration how to cash checks and use common sense.

Keith Felcyn

Greenwich

Urges SNAP support

To the editor:

These are hard times for many people in America, in Connecticut, and here in Fairfield County. According to Feeding America, 14.5 percent of people in Connecticut are food insecure, including 19.8 percent of our children. Fifty-eight percent of those children are eligible for SNAP (food stamps). Here in the state's most affluent county, it is 15.4 percent of the children -- almost 35,000, half of them eligible for SNAP. Things could be worse -- nationally 16.4 percent, over 50 million people, are food insecure.

Are these "moochers?" According to the USDA, almost 80 percent of Connecticut households on SNAP have at least one member working. Around 30 percent have more than one.

Children who go to school hungry cannot concentrate as well as those are fed. They do not absorb as much of the teaching, compromising our nation's future.

So, from both humanitarian and selfish points of view, these children (and their families) need help from those of us who are not hungry. Yet the Senate's recently passed farm bill will "save about $2.4 billion a year on the food and nutrition programs," according to the Associated Press. And the House will vote on H.R.1947, which in its present form would deny food stamps to 2 million low-income people and deprive 210,000 children of meals at school.

The 19th Century answer to the problem of hungry people was simple -- they starved. As our calendar moves forward into the 21st Century, which direction to we want our country to go? I urge everyone to contact Representative Jim Himes to ask him to vote against the SNAP cuts about which he spoke so forcefully last week. And I urge you to contact Senators Blumenthal and Murphy to ask them to continue to oppose the cuts as any farm bills move into the conference process.